This blog started as merely a means of describing who was behind certain spam campaigns and which illicit products they were selling illegally. Now it's more of an overall examination of how spam is merely one part of international organized crime.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

In the ongoing battle against career spammers, affiliate marketing companies are often a gateway for non-compliant spammers to attempt to get some quick, if fleeting, cash.

The product range many of these affiliate programs offer nearly always sound "too good to be true" but they do make them money. Career spammers essentially join, ignore any zero-tolerance policies the affiliate program has for email spamming (or any other spamming for that matter), get an affiliate id, and start up their email deployment system.

The products include a product that will turn your PC into an HDTV receiver using (they claim) only software, a book that tells you how to build your own solar cells, a book that tells you how to make thousands of dollars from home "instantly", and - my most recent favorite - a book called the "Lotto Black Book".

I decided to examine each of the claims this spam campaign makes, and especially the completely fake claims they make on their websites. Nearly every single statement on these websites is 100% false, and that's a big no-no pretty much anywhere in the world, but it's an especially eggregious offense in the US.

Here is a spam message I receive a few days ago from another career affiliate-progam-abusing spammer:

"How The Heck Did You Do It? What's Your Secret For Winning The Lottery?
Tell Us Or We'll Kill You" I Managed To Escape But I Got Shot In The Left Foot"

They Would Have Killed Me If I Didn't Tell Them My Lottery Secret…

But Today, It is yours:

===> http://gettingpaidinstantnow.info/lottowinningsecret/

Can Anyone Win The Lottery? ...Or How Did I Manage To "Kill" The Lottery 5 Out Of 10 Times?

I was searching for a lotto PATTERN...

Winning The Lottery Is Not ROCKET Science.

Anyone can do it. That's why I decided to publish all my secrets in a book.

Click below:

===> http://gettingpaidinstantnow.info/lottowinningsecret/

Best Regards,

Larry B.

Wow. That is quite the story, isn't it? The protagonist of this ridiculous spam campaign, "Larry B." (on the website it links to he says he is "Larry B****" but the footer says the site is made by "Larry Blair") is so good at winning lotteries that he's receiving threats.

It links to an affiliate website:

http://gettingpaidinstantnow.info/lottowinningsecret/

That might not exist for long, but if you've ever researched this type of spam you can spot it a mile away. One single, length, rambling page making a series of ridiculous or outright false claims. It's the HTML page version of a 3:30am infomercial on tv. They just repeat the same claim in numerous ways while telling an (arguably) outlandish story, then back it up with a series of "testimonials", which are also very easily proven to be false.

Here's the first thing you see when you visit this site:

Again I have to say: wow.

80 point masthead type shouting out "Oklahoma professor gets shot in the leg after winning the big lotto prize".

Before I dive into this particular site, let's just get a feeling for how many of these websites are out there. I did a quick google search for that first line and Google (as of this writing) returned "About 320,000 results" for that phrase with no quotation marks around it. If I add quotation marks, which looks for that exact phrase, it returns "about 10,200 results". So this site is not unique at all. Keeping in mind that it's also pulling up sites which ridicule this product - possibly this very website as well - the majority of the results are actually trying to sell you the Lotto Blackbook product.

A little further down, it claims that this is one of the people who shot him in the leg in order to gain his "secret" about winning lotteries.

"They Kept Asking Me:
"How The Heck Did You Do It? What's Your Secret For Winning The Lottery? Tell Us Or We'll Kill You…"
…I Managed To Escape But I Got Shot In The Left Foot"

Here is the robot portrait of one of the aggressors. it's the same picture that was presented to the police. They were never apprehended..."

It shows a police sketch:

Anyone can easily disprove this. A simple reverse image search (Thanks Tineye and Google!) shows that this is actually a police sketch of a crimnal wanted in Tennessee and Alabama for a string of armed robberies at check cashing facilities in several counties in that area:

You'll notice that there is absolutely no mention of shooting anyone in the leg in order to expose "lottery secrets".

It doesn't appear that he was caught, but it seems unlikely that the story would fail to mention that he shot someone in the leg. We can file this detail under "unlikely".

The writing about this (probably) completely fake scenario is written with way too much melodramatic flair. ("All you think about is your wife and children..." - so true, man... so... true.)

After an awful lot of copy about how he felt "blessed" for having his lotto-winning "secret" and claiming to donate it to charity, the story continues that he had to use a lot of paper and books for his research, and that his wife was concerned, and took a photo of what he claims was his desk:

That image is easily recognizable to a select batch of online nerds as being the winning entry to the 1999 "messy desk contest" which was held, at that time, at a site called bash.org:

The original contest is of course long gone. If you search for that image (thanks again Google) you get "About 9,370 results". So again: not at all a rare image. Is it our lotto-secret-wielding hero? Again: filing that under "unlikely".

Further still, an image that he claims is of him "winning" his first lottery, after trying his alleged theory for 8 years:

That photo is actually a picture of December 2006 Powerball winner Michael Anderson:

Wait - Michael Anderson? That doesn't even rhyme with the name "Larry B." So that's basically just an outright lie.

But did Michael Anderson use some hidden secret method to win his prize? The story doesn't say.

So let's look a little further down:

Google searching for that image, unfortunately, only turns up results of competing "lotto blackbook" websites. But if you look closely it doesn't appear to be the same person.

I would basically call bullshit on pretty much every facet of "Larry B."'s story. The police sketch doesn't add up; the first image of him is not him, it's Michael Anderson; the photo of the messy desk is unlikely to be his, and the second image of him "winning" again is unlikely to be him.

So let's talk about his so-called testimonials:

The first image shows someone he refers to as "Alain M."

Larry B's testimonial copy:

Larry, Thanks to your system, I managed to give up my day job. Now all day long I’m preparing for the weekend lotto drawings. This is the big prize I won. Sometimes I get a couple of thousand, sometimes hundreds … but one thing is for sure: I won almost every time.

When asked by Virginia Lottery officials how it happened, he replied simply, "I'm just lucky, that's all."

The winning numbers for that drawing were 4-8-20-22-34. He selected the numbers on his ticket at random.

At random.

Now: Alain might be trying to hide the so-called secret method Larry over here is talking about, but you would think we would have heard of him winning numerous times, since this is the claim made on the Lotto Black Book site. There is no mention.

Let me add that when a person wins the lottery, if they want to accept the money they have to give the lottery the right to use their name, their likeness and other identifying elements to promote the lottery. If Mr. San Giorgio actually had won the lottery that many times, there would be several press releases from the lotteries all saying so.

But there aren't. There's only one. Dating from Feb. 2009.

You would also see a series of personal interest stories in several newspapers commentingon how unlikely it was that such a person could win so many lotteries all the time. But in this case: zero.

So: another outright lie.

A companion site mentioned in the footer of this website - thelottoblackbook.com - features most of the same claims and testimonials, but also references just such a news story. They only show a screen grab of the story, but don't link to it:

Three of her wins, all in two-year intervals, were by scratch-off tickets bought at the same mini mart in the town of Bishop.

Mr Rich details the myriad ways in which Ms Ginther could have gamed the system - including the fact that she may have figured out the algorithm that determines where a winner is placed in each run of scratch-off tickets.

This entire time this website has been claiming that it will teach you how to beat lotteries like the Powerball, a lottery where a series of winning numbers are pulled completely at random, and tickets are purchased which have user-selected numbers on them.

Scratch tickets don't work that way. They are pre-printed and have serial numbers, and there are numerous stores of people who have foiled these systems. The two systems are completely different.

The site again claims that this person shared the same Lotto Blackbook method for winning lotteries, but the real article about Ms. Ginther states otherwise.

In short: it's really easy to assume a product is a scam in the first place, but when the websites promoting them (and the spam messages promoting the websites) are so chock-full of such easily disproven lies, it's time to question why the FTC and other consumer protection organizations haven't gone after companies like this one.

Of course he only receives payment via PayPal, so attempting to get your money back from this scam operation is probably a laborious and potentially fruitless exercise.

As usual it's up to the consumers themselves to be cautious about any claims a website makes - especially one promoted via unsolicited non-CAN-SPAM-compliant spamming - and I would hope this single posting provides enough proof that consumers should probably assume that any claim made by a spamvertised website is likely to be an outright fabrication.

My advice: If a company is lying to you once, you shouldn't waste your money on them. But if they lie to you numerous times like this one is? Not only should you never send them your money, the company behind these fraudulent spamvertisements should be completely shut down. That should be obvious to anybody.

Here are some links to discussions which debunk this obviously fraudulent operation:

I notice that now a mere month later they have completely changed the copy on the site I referenced:

thelottoblackbook.com

No mention of the shooting in the leg, no mention of the death threats, no mugshot -- but still showing all of the blacked-out faces of actual lottery winners, still using the completely fake names.

Stay far, far away from this ridiculous scam.

I'd also strongly recommend staying far away from any promotion using a Clickbank link to get you to the final destination, as this one does. Clickbank is an affiliate program which has become rife with criminal, career spammers over the past three years. I've had numerous complaints from people complaining that Clickbank never takes action against spammers who use their services. I don't doubt that, since they also appear to support this outright lie of a "product". Shame.

If anyone has unfortunately wasted their money on this ridiculous and obviously fake product I'd be interested to hear what your experience was in trying to get your money back.

I can't say this more clearly: there is no "secret" to winnning a randomly-selected lottery. There is no "system" that will improve your odds. Don't waste your money on these ridiculous (and fake) products.

You did a great job at exposing the Lotto BlackBook. Lots of people would love to see you expose another large lottery system scamer, his name is Ace Lee real name BJ Min.

This person has many lottery systems full of false advertising and sells Lottry Variant System and Mark Bower Lottery System using phony scenarios and acts like these are not his systems, stating to all they are great and you will win big, of course all lies.

The reason I chose to expose the idiotic "Lotto Black Book" scam is because several readers have written in about the rampany amount of non-compliant spam they continue to receive promoting this obviously bogus product. The only way I've heard of this Mark Bower competing product is from your comment.

I'll still dig into it (it can't be that hard) but if you have examples of spam being sent promoting it, that would be helpful.

thanx for exposing this lotto scam, today the mega millions was record of $640 million, i thought to buy the book and might win it back, thanks to your article i saw you warned me not to get fooled & robbed, this book is a scam, if it would be real, why put false pics and false articles, if the article is false so is the book...thanx for exposing them

Your having trouble so you go out and critisize everybody you can. Do you feel better? Clickbank has some of the top products on the Internet today for digital goods but yes there is junk but part of that is becausee its such a large network. why don't you try to learn to research your products first!!!! and use clickbank the correct way! and as far a contacted them, if you said yo cant get hold of them you are lying because clickbank is one of the fastest merchant companies to issure rufunds that are out there. Two days tops unless its the weekends! Maybe its time you to go back to the highest paid tax group in the US and shut off your computer and go get a job!

I've been investigating CRIMINAL spammers for around 10 full years now.

> Clickbank has some of the top products on the Internet today> for digital goods but yes there is junk but part of that is> becausee its such a large network.

Yes, and they shut the idiot behind this stupid spam message inside of 15 minutes of my report. I recommended that they strongly consider not supporting the "Lotto Black Book" based on this very report. And guess what? They don't promote it anymore. This is one of dozens of similarly fraudulent products or services which I've assisted ClickBank on weeding out of their system.

> why don't you try to learn to research your products> first!!!!

I did. It doesn't appear that you read it, even though you're posting on it.

There is no "black book" that can assist anybody in winning any lottery. If you believe that, you need to seriously re-educate yourself.

> and use clickbank the correct way!

?!?!

I'm not the idiot who sent this spam. I have been closely assisting ClickBank's abuse team for many years now. I know how to "use it correctly". I'm not a user of ClickBank. I have no idea why you have this impression. You certainly seem upset about it though. Maybe this was one of your sites that I was writing about.

> and as far a contacted them, if you said yo cant get hold of> them you are lying because clickbank is one of the fastest> merchant companies to issure rufunds that are out there.> Two days tops unless its the weekends!

Are you actually able to read? I mean at all?

Where did I say that I couldn't contact them?

Where did I say I purchased this worthless, obviously fraudulent product?

I didn't.

> Maybe its time you to go back to the highest paid tax group> in the US and shut off your computer and go get a job!

Oh I have a job. (Why do pro-spammers always say this?!)

Also: I'm not in the US. (Why do you assume that?)

I have a better idea: maybe YOU should read what I wrote. Posting a volatile, angry rant on my blog, when it's clear you have no idea what it is you're saying, and further obvious that you haven't even read what I wrote, is a waste of time. If you think my wanting fake, bogus products off the internet is a waste of time, how about you do some further research yourself.

Thank you for your blog. listening to the man speak in the video I could tell it was scripted. he kept his tone at the same level. never raising it as someone would telling their real life story. when it stopped abruptly I knew it was fake. I did my own google search. looked up his name and the state in which they said he won. all I got was the same scam in my search engine.i had to laugh cause I won't spend .10 on something like that. it was fun playing detective...lol

I had it figured for a scam as soon as I saw it. Your article is excellent and very informative.

I did come across the site with the mugshot a few minutes before I came here. They have probably changed URL's or something like that to keep you from referencing their site. I found it by Googleing Lottobook US.

Thanks for your blog.I noticed An Ethan P was a link to The Lotto Black Book so I reckon he is an affiliate of this so called Maths/Arithmetic Prof. I've never ever heard of an Arithmetic's Prof and anybody who knows anything about statistics knows that the odds of pulling the same number again is exactly the same as pulling any other numberThanks again

The names are meaningless. The whole thing is a huge lie. Do not waste your money. These people are the dumbest spammers anywhere. (Well: ALMOST as stupid as those all claiming to be dying from cancer and leaving me millions of dollars 18 - 20 times a day.)

Doesn't anyone stop to realize that if ANY of this lotto crap actually worked and there really was a "formula" or "system" to it, that that same formula or system would be floating out all over the internet? Google 'Lotto Black Book Formula' and find nothing. NOTHING! Because it doesn't work period and no one thought it worth passing along. If it really worked, it would have "leaked" by now.

And $97, really? That's not a red flag to people? Do they take BitCoins too?

My personal lifetime record is winning $1 8 consecutive days on the WI Badger 5 drawing through my patented system of picking numbers off people's license plates as I drive to the gas station. Give me $97 and I'll tell you more! LOL

Thanks for the very detailed revelation about these scam sites. I want to be an affiliate marketer who refers products which is of use to people, Not some scam who ripped people and make their lives miserable.

Before the Lotto Black Book by Larry Blair it was called Winning Lotto Strategies by Paul Conner who took a free book: Lottery Concepts by Robert Perkis and spun it into WLS along with the work of several other legitimate lottery authors. You can read more about it at http://www.lotterylottolotteries.com/index.html and at http://www.lotto-logix.com/winninglottostrategies.html

After being exposed too often the title changed to the Lotto Black Book. I'm not going to debate the quality of twenty year old lottery material that went into the book, suffice to say working with what came out is like trying to separate butter and eggs from the cake.

I just received this crap in my mail (site name has been changed to hxxp://wealthchoose.com/index.htm). I will admit the big bold headline caught my attention, then unfortunately for them I started to read.

I did a quick Google search for the Lotto BlackBook (an insult to the word 'the', to lottos and blackbooks everywhere) and came across your site, I'm glad I took a few minutes to check this out before I wasted any money on it.

Thanks for all your effort to save people from these useless spammers.

They process payments for this 100% fake product using the following custom payment processors:

secure-ssl-checkout[dot]comsafe-ssl-checkout[dot]com <- This site is dead as of June 2015.

The current list of domains their affiliates promote contains 111 distinct domains.

All of these sites operate in the exact same way:

Spam a preset message (which they provide) to your lists.Include your affiliate link to a single page that promotes the completely fake product being sold.Link from that page to payment processing

In every case the recipient is getting their credit card charged between $45 and $65 to gain access to a pdf file full of completely bogus information on topics from fake "green energy production" to fake "instant wealth solutions" to the above-mentioned completely fake "lottery black book".

At no point does this company ever offer any unsubscribe link, nor do they feature any kind of affiliate abuse contact at all. They fully support illegal spamming by their affiliates.

SpamIsLame

About Me

I am an independent fighter of those who choose to spam illegally, promoting either fake or illegal products to an unsuspecting public. Like most people, I despise illegal spammers and I will continue to spread knowledge on how to impact their ability to profit from spamming. There is a difference between "marketing" and spamming. Those who claim otherwise are idiots.